B2-92:
One opposition party and one ruling party are soon going
to have their party congress, the Radicals have done that
recently, and the pre-congress activities of SPS are so
intense they actually represent a serious election campaign.
Target of the attacks are, as usual, parties and leaders
of the opposition. We have chosen the propaganda attacks
of the two biggest candidates for the future Secretary-General
of SPS.
Gorica
Gajevic: We, Socialists, have never offered anything
unrealistic or promised what we cannot fulfill. We have
considered and we still consider the needs of the country
and citizens and the fulfillment of our obligations highly
responsibly. And that is, among other things, why we are
different from the rightist opposition parties, from those
who constantly say nothing is right with our country,
that we cannot do anything ourselves, that we must listen
to those from outside. According to them, Serbia should
not have a government, at least not the one freely chosen
by the citizens, but servants put up by our enemies to
realise their orders.
Uros
Suvakovic: Verminousness of the NATO-parties and their
officials who are carrying out local self-management are
felt the most by us, Belgraders, because of personal,
material and narrow party interests.
Gajevic:
According to them, we should not have defended ourselves
from the aggressor, but capitulated. According to them,
we should not have entered reconstruction but should have
asked humanitarian aid or waited for charity; according
to them, we haven’t even reconstructed anything, but making
up roads, bridges, houses, hospitals, schools.
B2-92:
President of Democratic Alternative, Nebojsa Covic, former
mayor of Belgrade and former SPS senior official thinks
that the upcoming congress of SPS may bring the answer
to the question whether any elections are going to be
organised and which one, but that the congress primarily
means the cadre spring cleaning of the party.
Nebojsa
Covic: All the cadre replacements are actually make
up for the public. I am not attributing any importance
to this congress, except we are going to be able to conclude
after it what is Milosevic’s choice and which political
moves he intends to draw, since his political moves are
mixed with all the other moves of repression, pressure
and other things, and we are certainly going to be able
to conclude whether he will go for the idea of organising
local elections or not. They will organise local elections
if they assume or conclude that the democratic opposition
is disunited. The only real answer to the organisation
of local elections is a unique election list; if we stay
united in the stance we have taken and stay with the thesis
of a unique list, I think Milosevic will not organise
local elections. He will try buying more time. The badge
of that congress - since the badge of the Third Congress
was "A Step Into the 21 Century" - is going
to be "Victory and Renewal", meaning, false
victory in war and even falser and more unrealistic victory
through a renewal.
B2-92:
"Party of the People" and "Let’s Win Over
the Cities" are the main slogans of SPS and in accordance
with that, there are personal reshuffles in the Belgrade
municipalities. That is why Milosevic decided to stick
out the old, but realiable cadres such as Branislav Ivkovic,
Zlatan Perucic or Goran Percevic. However, those officials,
Covic says, have gotten the assignment after which you
are either a colonel, or a corpse.
Covic:
According to the information from their circles that I
have, he is very, very critical towards his cadre, he
considers they are not doing the work as agreed and that
they distanced themselves from the people considerably,
that they don’t have the courage to go step down among
the people, that is why he is pushing those frontliners
to those positions. However, I think that even those are
worn out to great extent in the public. If he counts on
winning something, then that his estimate is based on
the system of local elections, which is proportional majority
in the first round. On the other hand, if they lose, it
is going to be their total elimination, but I think that
almost all of them see this as discreditation, those are
very low positions.
Branislav
Ivkovic, minister in the government and member of the
SPS Central Committee, asked how does he see his position
of a first Socialist in Vracar – as a punishment, or as
an award: I want to say that certainly it is not the
time for great speeches, but for doing the work,
especially in Vracar where the local self-management,
with its lousy work, led the municipality and citizens
to such a poor state. Lot of work by the Socialists is
required, exquisite work, exquisite work. Vracar is the
heart of Belgrade which is all the more important for
the Socialists of Vracar to improve the situation in Vracar
municipality with their work, stance towards fellow citizens,
dynamic engagement in the field, to define what is possible
to be done, undertaken both while we are opposition in
Vracar and when we come to power in Vracar. In any case,
I want to say that SPS in Vracar worked very well, that
so far it has had certainly the biggest support of all
the parties present in Vracar; on the elections in 1996
SPS got in local elections 36,5 per cent of votes from
the Vracar citizens, it is not a small number, individually
we are convicingly the strongest party here. At the same
time, we are since 1990 in position of not having a single
representative in municipal assembly, not a single one
in the city assembly, and that is additional motive to
win over the trust of the citizens of Vracar with our
work and ideas what is it that should be improved to make
the life easier. Vracar is a very specific municipality,
mostly elder people live there, the average of 60 years,
the specific thing of Vracar is that 3,000 families who
live here legally own their apartments, and that is the
direction of our activity – to help the mostly elder people
not to collide with kioks that occupied and destroyed
Vracar, to make Kalenic market place, which is the symbol
of Belgrade, a nicer place – our idea is to do a project
of a two floor garage under the Kalenic market place and
that way solve the problem of parking space in that part
of town, because a citizen cannot walk the pavement from
automobiles and kiosks, he simply must walk the driveway.
B2-92:
President of Social Democratic Union Zarko Korac thinks
that the authorities are preparing the tactics of attracting
voters similar to the one used on the first multi-party
elections.
Zarko
Korac: The tactics are similar to the tactics from
1990. On the first multi-party elections, SPS had disproportionally
large number of doctors; in the small town the doctor
is a respected man. Now you have a lot of municipal SPS
committee presidents who are directors of still working
firms, in other words, a lot of people depend on those
firms and, if someone votes for the victory of SPS, he
is voting for the possibility that the state help the
firm, because it’s all about mercy of the state and regime.
B2-92:
The time prior to the congress is the time when all the
members, especially the officials of the party are trying
to reach higher places in the party hierarchy, Covic says,
but points out that the majority of those people are very
cautious because of the dillemas they have.
Covic:
They have a dillema if Milosevic is still the man international
community wants to talk with or is he completely discarded
by the international community. The other kind of division
is – who will take which place because everyone has an
eye on certain position. Those who have a lesser degree
of intelligence act like that; a good number of people
are running away from all the possible positions completely
aware it’s a wrong policy and that it’s obvious now. I
left SPS in 1997, I think that the departure from SPS
costs much more now and that it is a much more dangerous
time because of everything that is happening. Great number
of people is dissatisfied because they are aware that
a cadre policy is being led by Yugoslav United Left, because
they are aware of an unnatural political situation, of
the single bed authorities. I think they are literally
up to here with the lady and that they can’t tolerate
it any more. Along with her they cannot tolerate certain
secretary generals any more as well, the ones belonging
to the group of completely unintelligent people, such
as Gorica Gajevic, but who are very obedient, such as
another possible candidates, for example Uros Suvakovic.
And the fourth factor is a certain degree of disgust with
Vojislav Seselj and his policy, his ostentatiousness and
obnoxiousness, primitivism, his disgusting extremism which
bathed in blood and his crminal behaviour – those are,
according to me, key factors causing great division in
SPS.
When
asked what arguments would he offer to the voters, leader
of the Radicals, Vojislav Seselj says: Here, you have
the municipality of Zemun. Eeverything we Radicals have
done for more than three years in Zemun, that is what
we offer to the voters in whole Serbia. Dozens of kilometers
of paved roads, dozens of kilometers of water supply system,
lot of sewage, a rheumatology building, open theatre,
a Radical miracle in the true sense of the word.
To
the simple question by our journalist if there are going
to be the elections in Serbia this year and which one,
Minister Branislav Ivkovic replies: SPS really carries
the responsibility for the functioning of the state with
every citizen of this country and that is what each one
of us members of SPS on any position must keep in mind
all the time. That is why we work as much as we work.
However, SPS is at the moment in the government of national
unity, the part of the jobs related to managing of the
country si being realised together with Radicals and YUL
members; therefore, Serbian government has the basic task
of securing a successful functioning of the state as much
as possible in the given conditions and I can say the
following: this country and this people survived the war
in Croatia and Bosnia and the aggression, and take what
is happening for example in Romania and Bulgaria and compare
with how this people here live in spite of everything
what is happening, and how do these others live. I haven’t
heard that someone from Serbia went to work in the fields
in Romania and Bulgaria, but as far as I know a lot of
them were coming over here.
B2-92:
You want so say that the life is good here?
Ivkovic:
I want to say it is much better than wanted by those who
did everything to create social tensions here in order
to enable their political puppets in the political system
of Serbia to come into power through those social tensions,
but unfortunately, you can see yourself that even they
do not believe in those they have fed for so long, and
they do no act according to their wishes.
B2-92:
You haven’t answered me to the question about the elections.
Ivkovic:
The elections should be held when the law says so. This
year, as far as I know, are scheduled the local and federal
elections, next year the republic ones.
B2-92:
According to the claims by Vojislav Seselj, there was
no agreement among the ruling coalition on the local elections
yet.
Seselj:
We speak about local elections very often, but we still
have not coordinated any specific dates. When it comes
to us, the Serb Radicals, we would like local elections
as soon as possible, in any case before the summer. And
these days we would renew our invitation to all the parties
represented in the federal parliament with the proposition
that the first consultive session on the discussion regarding
the upcoming federal elections be held.
B2-92:
To the same, several times repeated question, about the
date of the local elections, SPS spokesman Ivica Dacic
replied like this:
Dacic:
Do I look like an irresponsible spokesman to you? It seems
to me that since I’ve been a spokesman eight years already,
I don’t deserve to be underestimated that much. I already
said a hundred times that this year regular elections
will be held. I think I answered your questions, it’s
up to you now to invest a little effort and find out when
is the mandate of the parliament expiring, read the constitution
and you’ll see when are the constitutional deadlines.
B2-92:
And the Vice President of Democratic Party and mayor of
Nis Zoran Zivkovic, judging by the data he is getting,
as he put it, from the enemy camp, he thinks that the
elections should not be expected in the next several months.
Zivkovic:
Last night an intervention brigade or a YUL team came
to Nis and dismissed the Nis committee of YUL and appointed
a new man and I know he has gotten a mandate to consolidate
YUL within next three months. Judging from that, they
are not expecting elections in the next three months,
probably even more than that. I think there are no reasons
for regime to be certain it would win the elections, situation
is such today that they have no place on any elections
and I think that is the reason they are going to prolong
the elections as much as they can.
Zarko
Korac shares the opinion that the organisation of elections
should not be expected any time soon, especially if the
opposition maintains good relations among themselves:
My feeling is that SPS has not made any decision yet.
Certain pressure of the public exists to at least partially
meet the demands of the opposition, within the coalition
they are pressured by the Radicals, but not too much and
I personally think they haven’t made a decision yet. They
are assessing the processes in the opposition very carefully.
If they conclude that the agreement from January 19 is
a serious thing and that the opposition could make a joint
list, then, even paradoxically, it lessens the possiblity
of local elections being organised soon. That is the old
Milosevic tactic – he always waits, he has lot of patience,
sometimes, which is quite often, he misses the political
moment for solving something, that is one of his shotcomings,
but sometimes waiting gives him advantage, because the
times are tumultuous and he actually counts on a conflict,
division, the assessment at this moment is obvioulsy to
wait.
Vice
President of the Belgrade Assembly Milan Bozic points
out that the organisation of solely local elections, would
be suicidal for the ruling coalition from the procedural
reasons as well: Separating local elections from the
rest is quite inconvenient for them, because you
must not forget that when you have elections at the same
time, then the higher electoral commission is appointing
the lower electoral commission and voter committees. In
the case only local elections are held, the municipal
assemblies are to appoint electoral commissions and voter
committees. Therefore, I don’t think the current regime
would miss the opportunity to steal at the elections and
allow us to form a commission. The other thing is, I don’t
understand why they intend to go to solely local elections
when everything that is not a victory in Serbia’s largest
cities for them is – a defeat, and it is clear that they
cannot win these 5-6 large cities.
B2-92:
What makes it clear?
Bozic:
God almighty, do you really think that after
last three years of the opposition rule in Belgrade, after
totally free media, at least in Belgrade, the current
regime, retarded, worn out, shabby, can in any form animate
anybody in Belgrade to vote for them? Of course, they
can animate anybody, they will certainly have some
percentage of votes, but they certainly cannot have more
than on the 1996 elections, therefore I am a little bit
surprised by that suicidal self-confidence of theirs,
although that need not be that, it is possible that it’s
a part of a global campaign they are leading out of completely
different reasons.
B2-92:
And if the opposition does not go out to the elections?
Bozic:
First, if the opposition decides not to go out to the
elections, they will have a very resolute answer and it
would not be a joke. Then we will undertake other measures
to ensure that those elections do not happen. Of course,
you should never telephone your moves in advance, but
discuss them and make agreements.
Slobodan
Vuksanovic, Democratic Party, thinks that the opposition
should go out to the elections, even if only local elections
are organised and under current conditions: I think
that we simply have no choice – it’s not about political
issues and political evaluations, it’s about survival
and about survival of people. Parties are not here to
be ranked at 1st, 2nd, 3rd,
or 5th place, but to help the citizens. We
all know and we are certain that Milosevic will never
allow fair, regular election conditions; the only way
to beat Milosevic regime is that the whole opposition
unite and appear jointly on all the elections. When it
comes to local elections, the opposition parties should
in each municipality make an agreement on the joint appearance
and backing up of a candidate which will individually
compete in electoral units with the candidates of the
ruling parties. In that case, Milosevic regime would be
literally cleaned out of more than 100 municipalities
and everyone knows that. When it comes to republic and
federal elections, it’s high time somebody said what everybody
knew: the whole opposition should run under one name,
‘the opposition’, defeat Milosevic regime and thus overcome
all the irregularities that follow the elections under
Milosevic’s supervision, and then in several months or
a year organise regular, fair, democratic elections where
every party could go out individually.
On
the other hand, Secretary General of Democratic Party
of Serbia Dragan Marsicanin is of an opinion that all
those who think that under current authorities we are
not going to live to see good electoral conditions are
mistaken: We are certain that democratic elections
and acceptable conditions are going to happen sooner or
later. When will that happen, the time will show. It is
hard to predict, it is hard to guess, it is up to parties
of the democratic opposition to insist on and persist
in a joint agreement and in joint struggle for the fair
election conditions and for the organisation of general
elections, because it should be emphasised that all the
power lies in the republic. Without change on the republic
level, no essential changes are possible, therefore, participation
under any conditions only on local elections cannot essentially
change a thing – the practice proved that, and Democratic
Party of Serbia fights for that from the its very beginning.
The question of election conditions is crucial, the most
important question. We should not deal with what moves
will SPS make, they will do their job; it’s up to opposition
parties to be consistently oppositional and do their job.
Advisor
of Vuk Draskovic, Ognjen Pribicevic, to the question if
there are going to be local elections and should the opposition
participate, replies: All the parties must stick to
what we agreed upon on January 10 and I think it is dangerous
for any of the party presidents to step out of certain
mutual agreements. In that sense, these statements should
be seen as some kind of advertisement, essentially I think
all those things should not be paid much attention to,
the essential thing is that the parties would stick to
what we agreed upon on January 10 – Serbian democratic
opposition pledges for immediate early general elections,
which is to say as soon as possible, and under fair and
democratic conditions. That is the strategy, and what
would the tacticts be would depend on the agreement of
those same parties, which will in the end be their bodies’
decision. Under these conditions, they will not go out
to elections, that is the opinion of the whole opposition.
Zarko
Korac: The opposition, as it is now, will not make
a single decision that not includes all the signatories.
You cannot always gather all the people, it is important
to talk and another interesting thing we achieved – the
public does not know about them now, and I will openly
say – there were more meeting the public did not know
about and that is good. When we conclude something, it
will go out to public. We are talking about local elections,
we exchange information, we haven’t made decision yet.
Everybody listens to everybody.
Dragan
Marsicanin replies to accusations of Democratic Party
of Serbia being hard to cooperate with: We were really
hard for agreements, because in the first place we haven’t
made those deals with the regime – that is why we are
known for being hard to cooperate with and closed and
it is good that people say these things about us and it
is good that our supporters and our opponents are emphasising
this consistency and principiality of our party. At this
moment we will act in the same way, in accordance with
the agreement of all opposition parties, we will be consistent
to what all the parties agreed upon, which is that they
will persist in a fight for electoral conditions. I cannot
imagine those who took that stand three weeks ago changing
their stand now. Therefore, again it is about – to persevere
or not to persevere in a fight for fair elections. To
us it is highly unacceptable to neglect the issue of electoral
conditions, control, electoral law.
Zoran
Zivkovic, Democratic Party: When it comes to me personally,
I think that the oppositon can appear unitedly or jointly
at all levels, especially at local ones, not only because
of the legal, lawful thing, but also because of the essence,
that we as a joint front put an end to 10 years of suffering
under Milosevic, Seselj and Mira Markovic. For serious
people, vanity and envy are the past, I think it should
be forgotten, I think that the solution is a joint list.
Slobodan
Vuksanovic, Democratic Party: I have a solution for
that: to all parties equally, as many parties – that many
mandates, if we talk about reopublic and federal elections,
because this is the time for ousting Milosevic, not for
competition and ranking. When it comes to local elections,
it is in the hands of people who head parties in individual
municipalities.
Zarko
Korac, SDU: I think that a joint list beats the Socialists
under any conditions, but I will respect the decision
of my colleagues. I think it is difficult to make such
a list in certain places, let’s say Belgrade, but in many
other places it’s not difficult.
Branislav
Ivkovic, SPS, on opposition making a decision to go out
to the elections with a joint list: That would be
good. It would be good if finally an occassional
good candidate came out of a group of those 15-20 minor
parties. None of them is capable of posting their candidate.
One opposition party is supposed to cover the whole republic
of Serbia and post a quality candidate in every town –
that’s impossible. They can do something here and there,
only if all of them unite.
B2-92:
And can SPS, YUL and Radicals jointly win local elections?
Ivkovic:
I would not predict that, it is the job of those parties’
bodies and their management.
B2-92:
You are the management.
Ivkovic:
No stances have been taken on that issue in my party.
Nebojsa
Covic, DA: If the opposition is to march in several
columns, I’m afraid we won’t be able to have a positive
result, because those 20 per cent would be enough for
him in the first round, the remaining theoretical 80 per
cent would be dispersed among us. I am self-confident
that the expirience democratic opposition already has
ensures that they will not be able to steal as they stole
so far, however, they are prepared for that as well, because
the Law on local self-management includes another small
trap - in local elnvironments where democratic opposition
is in power, the voter lists and the voter committees
are determined on the level of district. The level of
district is not the constitutional solution, the level
of dictrict came out of the government decrees, but they
sidestepped the thing that way, the committees and the
lists were moved to republic level which is a new danger.
But regardless of all that, if democratic opposition goes
out with a joint list, Milosevic would be defeated to
the ground which opens up a whole lot of space.. It is
true that the local self-management was stripped of a
lot of authority, however if you make a good network of
local self-management and launch it, it cannot match the
republic authorities, but it can simply remove them in
2-3 months.
Milan
Bozic, SPO, about regime’s campaign against Belgrade authorities:
This is a kind of demonstration exercise before the
congress, I assume, and some kind of demonstartion exercise
for the opposition what would the campaign look like when
the elections come and I think it is good for our training,
but since we were trained well by some of earlier situations,
I have the impression that this time we are functioning
very well, notice how fast the strike of private transporters
was solved, Serbian politics is simply entering a mature
phase, I would say that both sides are not that naïve
any more, that the opposition is not rushing forward headless,
it is not a bunch of amateurs as before.
B2-92:
Do you think that this campaign is not going to take away
some of your voters?
Bozic:
I even think it might bring us some, because voters –
and I am not counting here those segements who are a priori
for the opposition or the regime – are now actually evaluating
things more, because they know now for whom they’ve voted
before. They will now evaluate more how capable of coping
we are, how strong we are, and I think we are showing
that we are capable of coping with the authorities, I
think that in the last three years in Belgrade, and let’s
be realistic, it is the most serious power the Serbian
opposition has, for the first time they don’t see us as
opposition lamenting over lack of media freedom or lack
of democracy, but people with concrete power who are coping
with other authorities, and I think that if we have managed
to gather enough voters solely based on calling them to
change the regime, we will gather at least a bit more
on showing we are able to cope for three years.
B2-92:
City authorities were accused of various malversations.
By being in power in Belgrade, did SPO got something,
lost or remained the same?
Bozic:
I am completely certain it got something. The other thing
is I think that the authorities overplayed their story
in certain sense; they lied so much that at certain moment
the voter got so sick of it that it treats every story
about theft and corruption as propaganda, which could
be dangerous for the future of democracy in Serbia, because
real problems will have to be adressed sooner or later
– where is the money from cigarettes, where is the money
from oil, from strategic raw materials the state is exporting,
wood, coal, electricity – when we open up those subjects,
we can face our voters not believing us that somebody
from that regime was stealing - one day he is going to
be gone – and all because the current regime propaganda
contaminated the media space so much that nobody believes
nobody. I think that this literally belongs to folklore
– if you tell somebody he’s a thief, it is a replacement
for sending him to hell, because you can’t say that on
television.
Vojislav
Seselj, Serbian Radical Party, on the counter-productive
results of that campaign: What is counter-productive
to us, if anything, is our concern. We are going out in
front of voters and voters will judge each one of us and
choose on the elections according to that. Literally everything
we do, we do in order to win the support of our voters
and citizens of FRY and RS. It is more than certain that
we have strong arguments against local authorities of
the Zajedno coalition. The question of city authorities
in Belgrade is one of the questions we were in dispute
about with our coalition partners last two years of the
government of national unity. We were for receivership
in Belgrade from the very beginning, for organising extraordinary
elections, immediately, within a month or two. Our coalition
partners hesitated there, before it was let’s keep Draskovic
under tighter control so that he could not go out to the
streets and cause bloodshed, and I hope there is not going
to be that hesitation now when it turned out that the
teeth of Vuk Draskovic are very blunt.
Ivica
Dacic, SPS: I only want to say that the biggest punishment
for the citizens of those cities and municipalities is
being ruled by members of the former Zajedno coalition,
which was so united that it endured a month or two after
the elections and which united again before the elections
hoping to win a political point or a vote more. My personal
opinion: I would not like to deny myself the pleasure
of seeing these authorities lose local elections.
B2-92:
The amount of Radicals’ power within the ruling coalition
is not clear. As an argument of power, people mention
the coverage of the Radicals congress by RTS prime time
program, including the song "Get Ready Chetniks!"
at the beginning.
Seselj:
We don’t think the congress of any party should be broadcast
live on state television, especially when it lasts 7-8
hours as our congress lasted, but we addressed the director
of the state television with a demand to authorise the
showing of a special program on our congress and he immediately
responded to that demand which obviously shows that the
relations of SRS, as one of the ruling parties, towards
state television are improving. We think it should happen
like this in the future, that every party should be represented
in the programs of the state television according to its
rank and power and we are satisfied with the time we got,
it was nearly two hours.
Zarko
Korac: The history of that event is interesting. On
the day the SRS congress was held, the state media objectively
ignored that, they haven’t showed a thing. According to
our information, in the evening there was a crisis in
the ruling coalition, Seselj threatened, he demanded a
meeting with the man who decides on everything in Serbia
and as a consequence of those very strong protests - according
to our information, there were even threats of breaking
off the coalition - the next day RTS set it straight and
did all of that. It shows that Seselj can still force
the concession out of SPS when he pushes hard, but it
is only when his interests are really threatened. Don’t
forget the word I used – concession; that means that Socialists
don’t have to share the power in operational sense with
Radicals in too much detail but, of course, they have
certain obligations. That shows what our ruling coalition
looks like – one evening you have "The Igman March",
the other evening you have "Get Ready Chetniks!"
I would like people who vote for that coalition to show
me how can you link these two things in your head, to
find a common denominator between partisan marches and
chetnik songs, it’s tragicomical, it’s the picture of
ruling coalition – underneath corruption, on top of it
political combinatorics, which is going to cost dearly
at the elections.
Is
Milosevic concerned about the situation in the country?
Branislav Ivkovic: Yugoslav president is an exquisite
host, he is an extremely responsible man and each of his
steps and each of his decisions precedes thorough evaluation
of the situation. He is an extremely responsible man,
man who impresses the man he talks with.
